Sunday, July 11, 2010

As the early morning swish-swooshes into a blurry encore of the diminishing night's song, the night holds a protesting vigil that is exemplified through every passage of the common city. The street lights line up as legionnaires, tall giants spaced apart, silently and majestically showering the world with a caramel glow that illuminates safety through the haze of the dark night sky.

Traffic lights mount the pavements as sentinels, rhythmically emitting white light diffracted into iridescent splashes of ruby, topaz, and emerald. The colours prevail into the distance, cautioning awareness and granting passage to the superior four-wheeled race who hold up high their noses (radiator grills) and patronise the mortal bicycle men lurking in the shadows on either side. This squad of news distribution delegates emerge occasionally to gawk at the cascades of brushed aluminum, spherical opaque bodies and poised slivers of metallic gleam all while minding their own business.

As I grasp all of this in a second, my dalliance with visual modality attracts the attention of my seat-mate and the bluetooth-type kinetic transfer of epiphany that I attempt fails spectacularly.

Maybe we still need cables?

Still, as our faces hide in the absence of light we seem to share in common the sense of purpose that places us together there right then. The road extends onward like curvy waves in a sea of waypoints leading back - not exactly in terms of latitude and longitude but something that works well enough - to an individual’s heart or convenience. It leads to shelter. If you don't miss your stop.

Nevertheless as reflection overcomes perception, those behind the tinted windows of a transport van realize that to a lot of fortunate people the same window pane beholds outward a dizzle-dazzle world of satisfying nationwide nocturnalism that they help make real. They realize that after everything has been said, seen, done and happened it brings with it – like all type of occupational schedules – peace of mind maintained by a strand of reality as thin as a fragile gossamer that can be shattered when grasping the fact it doesn’t remit enough monetarily, it isn’t really worth doing or, unique to this scenario, you’ll be up again doing the exact same thing in very few hours.

In spite of all this as we travel through the passages of the common city, the golden sparkle of overhead orbs play a melody, sprinkling themselves everywhere like hundreds and thousands, transforming everything and revealing in a moment of clarity the sight before us, reaching far into our conscience the felicity of creation as they stun us and bring all around them to a halt. It effectuates the inversion of a robust township that can only be discovered when silence sails over and consequently only few witness.

Making it worth it, almost.

Anyway, in its undulating loyalty to the task, the tell-tale shine of two-minute shoe polish fails to mirror my look of dismay on black leather as I realize there’s nothing captivating about missing your drop-off point.

Happily, I’m already on the long walk home – and it’s just been night on the closing shift. hsn